Paul Eluard once said “There is another world but it is in this one.” In Dark Stars, Ken McCullough presents a compendium of the human condition, always grounded in the natural world, and often in totemic relationships. There is lost innocence, love present, and back through time, there are tributes to friends and mentors. McCullough keeps one foot in the primal world and the other in community, yet he travels confidently from one to the other. You hear the poet making peace with mortality. Though this is a slim volume it has a deep and engaging sweep. It is a rough bouquet collected en plein air. We are left wanting more.

Ken McCullough was born in Staten Island, N.Y., but spent his formative years in St. John’s, Newfoundland. More recently, he has drawn inspiration from the mountains of Montana and Wyoming and the blufflands of the Upper Mississippi. In 1992 he was adopted into the Miniconjou band of the Lakota Nation. He is a graduate of St. Andrew’s School, the setting for Dead Poets Society, and has degrees from the University of Delaware and the Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa.

McCullough’s most recent books of poetry are Walking Backwards, Sicomoro.Oropéndola (published in Colombia), and Broken Gates, as well as a book of stories, Left Hand.

Visit the author's website.